Â鶹´«Ã½

IN 1957 two anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux, surveyed
schoolchildren on their ideas about scientists. Boys were asked what kind
of scientist they could imagine themselves becoming. Girls addressed themselves
to what kind of scientist they wanted to marry. . .

Any consideration of women’s increased participation in science has
to keep in mind that educational context, in which the mothers and fathers
of the forthcoming generation of scientists grew up. If such a division
seems unthinkable now, it is at least partly because girls and women are
now expected to answer the call of their country and go into science. Women,
particularly young women, have been identified as a rich source of scientific
recruitment because their actual participation in science is so far below
their potential. At every level of education, to doctorate and beyond, women
now comprise one third or more of total numbers. But not in science.

In 1987/88, similar numbers of young women and men left British schools
with two or more A-levels, the qualification for entry to higher education.
But while 26 per cent of the young men passed two or more science and maths
A-levels, only 11 per cent of the young women did so.

The 103 000 women at university made up 44 per cent of all university
undergraduates in 1988/89, according to the Universities’ Statistical Record.
But women accounted for only 27 per cent of all physical science students,
25 per cent of maths students, and 11 per cent of students reading engineering
and technology (see Figure 1). The postgraduate figures are the same. The
number of women on MSc and PhD courses has increased significantly in the
past five years, so that they now make up almost 40 per cent of university
postgraduates. But there are more than five times as many men postgraduates
in science as there are women.

The exceptions to this pattern are the biological sciences and medicine.
Biology has, of course, always been seen as a ‘girls’ science’ – although,
interestingly, the subject has sustained its high rates of female participation
even while plants and wildlife have given way to microbiology and genetic
engineering. But women’s participation in medicine, for which they must
do physical science and for which more stringent university entry qualifications
are demanded than for straight science courses, show not that girls are
unable to do science but that they are not doing it by choice. In the past,
they have made that choice in the middle years of secondary school, when
subjects are dropped before exams at 16. (This is their overt choice; there
is considerable evidence that girls make up their minds to opt out of science
much earlier.)

Given that girls probably make choices based on what they think about
science and scientists – as so many of those who stick with science plan
to be not scientists but doctors or vets – several psychologists have repeated
updated versions of the questions that Mead and Metraux asked. The results
are fairly depressing. Helen Haste, a psychologist at the University of
Bath, found that many of the 260 children she studied, who were all from
the top academic band, thought of scientists in stereotypes: ‘A mad professor
writing on a clipboard standing in front of a bench covered with apparatus.’

Both girls and boys emphasised that science was difficult and that difficult
subjects were for boys. This was borne out when the children were asked
to rate the masculinity or femininity of different subjects. Both sexes
rated chemistry, physics and maths as the most masculine – exceeded only
by woodwork.

Two developments in schools may give girls greater confidence in tackling
science. One is the new GCSE exam at 16, which replaces O-levels. With more
project work and greater emphasis on science in context, there is early
evidence that girls perform better in the new exam than in the old one.
The second is the National Curriculum introduced by the government, which
lays down that all pupils must study ‘balanced’ science to 16. So no one
is free to give up everything but biology. Sceptics argue that this is fine
in principle, but that the shortage of physical science teachers, and a
clause that allows some pupils to spend 12 per cent instead of 20 per cent
of their time studying science, will mean little difference in practice.

That leaves WISE – Women into Science and Engineering – as the main
vehicle for keeping girls and young women in science until university. And
it is, literally, a vehicle, as WISE’s presence around the country is carried
in four buses, fitted with a demonstrator and equipment for 13- and 14-year-old
girls to try out microelectronics, pneumatics and microprocessors. So far,
60 000 girls have visited a WISE bus since WISE year in 1984. The Engineering
Council, the main sponsor, is about to publish a 30-page booklet of all
the awards, courses and industrial visits offered to girls and young women
through WISE.

The numbers of women entering science and engineering have risen steadily,
if undramatically, since 1984. The greatest success has been chemical engineering,
where the propor tion of female undergraduates was 20 per cent in 1988/89.
Other engineering subjects have at least gone from single to double figures.

But overall, the growth is small. Daphne Jackson, professor of physics
at the University of Surrey and a prominent figure in the organisation of
WISE year, admits that early hopes for WISE have been disappointed: ‘WISE
was by no means a failure: it was a success for individual girls and for
certain schools,’ she says. ‘But when we all started there was a feeling
that these poor unfortunate girls didn’t know the delights of a scientific
career, and if only we gave them the information they would all be converted.
What one has increasingly discovered is all the other obstacles: peer pressure
in schools, parental attitude in some cases, inability to get to the apparatus
because the boys grab it. Now I think we need to look at the training of
teachers, and the education of boys and men. What I am saying in a sense
is that the problem is much more complex than we originally understood.’

Some people are trying to untangle that problem, both towards the end
of students’ careers at secondary school and after they have left. Several
colleges now run ‘taster’ weekends or day-schools for fifth and sixth-form
girls without the competing presence of boys, so that they can sample undergraduate
science. Researchers at the University of Manchester have even made a video
for girls contemplating studying physics.

There are also growing numbers of access and conversion courses: HITECC
(Higher Introductory Technology and Engineering Conversion Course) courses
in polytechnics and colleges, offering one-year boosters in maths and physics,
have female participation rates ranging from as low as 7 per cent to half.

Another way in which women’s opportunities to study science have grown
is through the trend for replacing traditional single or joint honours with
modular degree courses in polytechnics. London’s City Polytechnic claimed
this year that its modular course meant that 40 per cent of its students
in computing and information technology were women – many of whom intended
to do other subjects on entry – at a time when women’s participation in
computer science is falling nationwide.

Changes in the emphasis of a course can also have an effect. Gillian
Gehring, just appointed to the University of Sheffield as Britain’s second
woman professor of physics, points out that young women can be instantly
reassured if electronics is made optional: ‘Girls are convinced that all
the boys have been soldering radios since they were five, and they can’t
possibly catch up. . . . But you can’t change too much. The girls who want
to come into physics are interested in black holes and quarks and so on
as much as the boys – it’s the excitement of abstract ideas that turns them
on and one should give them a course which contains that.’

But attracting more women to science higher education does not mean
their difficulties are over. In the US, where the participation of women
in science has risen faster than in Britain, one study followed 80 students
(46 women and 34 men) who left high school having been top of the class.
When these students were asked what they thought about their own performance
at college, the women increasingly underestimated themselves, even though
their actual grades were slightly better than the men’s. By the final year
of college, 25 per cent of the men put themselves in the highest category
of achievement, and none of the women did (see Figure 2).FIG-mg17124002.GIF

The collapse in confidence is a crucial indicator of why women then
fail to enter the research degrees that will establish them in the scientific
workforce. Women are much more likely to stop at the level of master’s degree
than men, and to have severe doubts about their right to be at graduate
school at all, according to Sheila Widnall, professor of aeronautics and
astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She quotes another survey, this time at Stanford University, of male
and female graduate students in science and technology. Thirty per cent
of the women, compared with 15 per cent of the men, questioned their own
ability to handle the work. Thirty-five per cent of the men compared with
24 per cent of the women were confident of ‘making it’ in their chosen field.
Some 9 per cent of the men and 23 per cent of the women said they thought
they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Jackson, from Surrey, recently visited Australia to look at the status
of women in higher education there. She found that women students, at both
undergraduate and graduate level, were offered support that might alleviate
this lack of confidence, through ‘role models’ and ‘mentors’. Evidence collected
by Eileen Byrne, professor of education at the University of Queensland,
suggests that a single inspiring example of a woman scientist – the Marie
Curie syndrome – is not enough. A ‘critical mass’ of prominent women staff
in scientific subjects is required before girls will feel free to emulate
them, she says.

The Australian educationalists coined the word ‘mentorship’ to describe
a process of positive sponsorship by older patrons – teachers, managers,
trainers. Mentors recommend their protegees for awards and scholarships,
advise and encourage them, discuss new work in their fields, and enhance
their visibility through joint papers or seminars.

Such support contrasts with the American practice of appointing more
female postgraduate students to teaching assistantships – and more men to
research assistantships. The effect of that, according to Widnall, is to
isolate women further from the research establishment. The men participate
in research teams, get their names on publications, learn new skills and
make contacts; the women are so occupied teaching students that their own
research suffers.

Yet women do obtain doctorates, and they do join the scientific academy
– albeit at the lowly level of temporary contract researcher. Indeed, while
permanent university posts have been falling in the Britain, contract research
jobs have increased by 70 per cent between 1976 and 1986, and women’s participation
has increased with them.

Carol Varlaam, of the Institute of Manpower Studies in Brighton, thinks
this is a mixed blessing. She carried out a study of 4000 contract researchers
in 1988, in which she found that working conditions for both sexes range
from the frustrating to the dubious. Insecurity and the lack of opportunities
for promotion are common. Few researchers have much help from technical
support staff and employers often demand waivers of redundancy and unfair
dismissal rights. Varlaam’s figures show that women in contract research
are still distributed unevenly by subject, heavily outnumbering the men
in biological sciences and medicine, and still the minority in physical
sciences, maths and technology (see Figure 3).FIG-mg17124003.GIF

The figures also show that women are much more likely to have shorter
contracts than men. This applies even in biological sciences, where contracts
tend to be longer and where women outnumber men by four to one. Two-thirds
of those men have contracts lasting more than three years – while 87 per
cent of the women have contracts lasting three years or less. A larger proportion
of men than women have three-year-plus contracts in every subject.

There are various explanations for this, according to Varlaam. Women
enter contract research slightly later than men; slightly fewer hold PhDs.
Women are less mobile than men, although both sexes give the same answers
about their motivation for doing research, quoting career, money or availability.
None of these explanations, she says, accounts fully for the disparity.

Nevertheless, the problem that comes to face many of these women is
not the brevity of the contract but when to pull out of it. Young women
scientists face an agonising decision, according to Anne Warner, a physiologist
and Royal Society professor: ‘The trouble is women very often haven’t decided
whether they want to have a long-term career in science until 10 years later
than the men. . . . I would like to see good scientists being able to get
on with being good scientists rather than spending so much time worrying
‘If I have a child now will I ever get back into science?’ People are forced
to make those kinds of decisions too early, when they can’t tell if they
want a long-term career or whether they are going to be good scientists
or not.’

Getting back in has become a little easier since the creation of a scheme
for women returning after a break, which was instigated by Jackson. The
scheme, which began in 1986, offers part-time fellowships, lasting two or
three years, in university departments to women who want to update their
skills and get back into research. Twenty-seven women out of 150 applicants
answering advertisements in women’s and scientific magazines have so far
received places on these fellowships. And the scheme, which looked as if
it would falter with no permanent sponsor, has been underwritten by British
Gas. About 10 women have so far completed their fellowships; only one, in
an isolated location, is now unemployed. Three have been appointed to university
lectureships. One of those is Hilary Hurd, 42, who has a post in biological
sciences at the University of Keele.

She was unusual among the group in having already returned to science
after her children started school. She was offered a research post after
her first degree in the 1960s, but went into schoolteaching instead. Then
she had two children and gave up paid work for five years. She wanted to
take a taught master’s degree to update herself, but then her husband moved
jobs to Staffordshire, and Keele – the only accessible university – could
offer her only a research degree. They offered her a research assistantship
until she completed a PhD in parasitology.

By then, her children were older, and although she was unemployed for
six months after gaining her doctorate, Hurd continued to go into the laboratory
and write papers. She was offered a post as a demonstrator, then a returner’s
fellowship, and finally a permanent lectureship.

Looking back, she says, she realises that a lack of self-confidence
deterred her from research the first time around: ‘I came back with the
intention of teaching, but as soon as I started I realised I wanted to do
research. Now I wish I’d done it before.’

Combining research and young children is, Hurd says, ‘like a jigsaw.
And the problem with biology,’ she adds, ‘is that you’re dealing with living
organisms and they don’t always work to your timetable.’ Warner agrees:
‘If you are going to be an experimental scientist, at some stage in your
career you are going to have to put in the hours to get the experiment to
work. You can’t always switch an experiment off at five o’clock.’

But men often attend departmental meeting in the afternoon, leaving
their experiments to technicians, Gehring points out. She – and the other
two – think that the most important incentive for women to stay in science
would be the introduction of flexible working arrangements. These could
include grants for part-time research – at present part-time research students
get no maintenance and have to pay their own fees of up to Pounds sterling
1000 a year – and part-time jobs ranging from five mornings a week to three-quarters
or seven-eighths of full-time. Such posts would be mainstream careers rather
than time-fillers for married women.

The demand for working arrangements like these, particularly if they
also include incentives such as refresher courses and child care for returners,
is potentially immense.

The Royal Society of Chemistry last year surveyed its members because
it was concerned about women leaving the profession early (This Week, 22
April, 1989). It found that most of its members (95 per cent of the men
and 93 per cent of the women) worked full-time, although 11 per cent of
those aged between 35 and 39 were part-timers. Most employers offered neither
job-sharing nor flexible hours, while 85 per cent of women under 35 said
they would like them. Seventy per cent of the women questioned by the society
said they would like child-care facilities at work, compared with 39 per
cent of men. But 90 per cent of employers had no such facilities. Employers
offered no formal career break scheme to 82 per cent of employees of either
sex, while 89 per cent of women and 81 per cent of men said they would like
the society to run refresher and retraining courses for returners.

Of those women who had taken a career break, 44 per cent said their
job responsibility or status had changed for the worse since their return.
(Another 40 per cent said it was unchanged; 16 per cent said it had improved.)
That figure sheds some light on the pattern of women’s participation in
the science academy too.

Women scientists form a human pyramid, with relatively large numbers
at the bottom and almost none at the top. But medicine shows that women
can achieve high status: 15 per cent of university readers and senior lecturers
are women, compared with 3 per cent in other sciences and 1.6 per cent in
engineering. There are 25 women professors of clinical medicine. In physics,
there are now two; in biochemistry, one; in chemistry, none
(see Figure 4).

According to Jackson, if women were distributed between grades according
to their overall presence in university faculties, there would not be 100
or so women professors but 600. The system, she says, ‘is not hostile to
women – it simply ignores us’. The system ignored women, too, in the so-called
‘new blood’ lectureship scheme, which was virtually the only source of junior
posts in the early 1980s (see ‘Where are the new scientists?’ Â鶹´«Ã½,
7 April). The scheme barred people over 35, which in 1984 an industrial
tribunal found to be discriminatory because women who have broken their
careers to have families would be less able to qualify than men.

The successor to the new blood scheme is the ‘new academic appointments
scheme’, which has no official age bar, but still follows the guidelines
of the University Grants Committee that the average age of the new appointees
should be ‘significantly under 35’.

The age profile of academics is now around 42, a matter of concern to
many bodies in higher education. As a result, these potentially discriminatory
age bars appear in several of the latest attempts to bring more young scientists
into research. (To be fair, the Royal Society has appointed at least one
41-year-old women, Alice Rodgers, a mathematician, to one of its 1983 fellowships,
whose theoretical age bar is 33.) Repeating discriminatory practice accords
badly with the much-professed desire to attract more women into science.
At least one senior woman scientist, who refuses to be named, alleges that
discrimination is widespread. She says she knows several women who were
appointed lecturers in one department, when others, not wanting to appoint
women, had not even shortlisted them. The wide discrepancy between departments
in the number of women they employ suggests systematic prejudice, she alleges:
‘I don’t think the scientific establishment cares at all about bringing
more women in. I don’t think it crosses their minds.’

Gehring attributes at least part of the uneven presence of women between
departments to a safety in numbers syndrome. Before she left the University
of Oxford for her new post in Sheffield, the solid-state physics group there
always comprised between one quarter and one third women, with three female
permanent staff and several female graduate students. At least one such
student, she says, had transferred to Oxford because she had felt so exposed
as the only woman in another department.

The Australian government has told universities and colleges that it
will evaluate their progress towards offering equal opportunities to female
students and staff. All institutions are required by law to appoint equal
opportunities officers. Senior staff in Australian universities are emphatic,
according to Jackson, that all academic appointments will be made on merit
– but that by provision of child care, parental leave, training, mentors,
clearer definition of appointment criteria and encouraging women to apply,
there will be structural change to give women an equal chance.

‘What happens here is that my colleagues will say very sadly ‘We didn’t
get any women applicants’ without thinking perhaps there’s an onus on them
to go out and attract women applicants,’ she said. ‘We all know women who
were good and have disappeared, and it doesn’t take more than a postage
stamp to find out if they are at the stage when they could come back. Some
of the universities in Australia have started re-entry fellowships with
their own money. Here it’s left to odd bods like me.’

Ìý